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Jazz guitarist Pat Martino, a virtuoso twice over, dies at 77 : NPR

Pat Martino posing together with his guitar in 1994. The celebrated jazz guitarist died Nov. 1 at age 77.

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Michel Delsol/Michel Delsol/Getty Pictures


Pat Martino posing together with his guitar in 1994. The celebrated jazz guitarist died Nov. 1 at age 77.

Michel Delsol/Michel Delsol/Getty Pictures

Pat Martino, a jazz guitarist revered for the fluid precision and blistering pace of his taking part in — each earlier than and after he was pressured to relearn the instrument following a mid-career mind aneurysm — died on Monday. He was 77 years outdated.

His demise was introduced on Fb by his longtime supervisor, Joseph Donofrio. Martino, born Patrick Azzara, died after an extended sickness within the South Philadelphia row house previously owned by his dad and mom, the place he moved in 1980 after present process neurosurgery that saved his life — on the near-total value of his reminiscence. The guitarist had been affected by a persistent respiratory dysfunction since 2018, respiratory with oxygen assist and unable to play since a tour of Italy that November. He’s survived by his spouse, Ayako.

Martino’s profession spanned six a long time and quite a lot of types, from his early life performing in organ teams to the Wes Montgomery-influenced laborious bop of his early recordings, religious explorations within the late 60s ceding to the blazing, virtuosic fusion of Seventies classics like Joyous Lake.

Whatever the setting, Martino performed the guitar with an depth of focus and impeccable readability at even essentially the most dizzying tempo. At all times retaining the soul and buoyant groove that he honed together with grasp jazz organists like Charles Earland, Don Patterson and Jack McDuff, Martino melded that profound really feel with a rock-fueled ferocity born of a questing spirit reasonably than aggression.

That evolution was instantly interrupted in 1980 when Martino suffered the near-fatal seizure that left him to rebuild his reminiscence and his profession from scratch. He had been born with an arteriovenous malformation, a situation that had led him to undergo hallucinations and seizures since childhood however remained misdiagnosed.

Martino emerged from the expertise with a newfound, Zen-like outlook. In an interview for the Philadelphia Inquirer in 2011, he referred to the expertise as “the best factor that ever occurred to me.” Whereas his philosophical bent was presaged by titles like “Consciousness” and “The place Love’s a Grown-Up God,” the guitarist later seen the early a part of his profession as pushed extra by ambition than artwork.

“My profession actually got here to an finish at that very second,” he stated of the surgical procedure. “From that time ahead, my curiosity was now not in my occupation; my curiosity was in survival as a human being. It erased the blackboard, and I discovered myself in the identical place as I used to be as a toddler.”

Martino had spent his childhood in South Philadelphia, his father a singer and someday guitarist who carried out in native nightspots. Impressed by Montgomery and Les Paul, Martino started taking part in guitar on the age of 12, ultimately finding out with the revered trainer Dennis Sandole, whose college students included such future jazz giants as John Coltrane. In his early teenagers he performed with buddies just like the saxophonist-turned organist Charles Earland and then-drummer, later-pop-idol Bobby Rydell.

Decided to fulfill his jazz idols, Martino set out for Harlem on the younger age of 15 and shortly settled right into a busy schedule taking part in with masters of the Hammond B-3 organ. Traces of these soul-jazz origins can nonetheless be heard on the guitarist’s 1967 debut for Status, El Hombre, that includes Philly organist Trudy Pitts. The album’s distinctive lineup finds Martino already pushing into new terrain nevertheless, with a guitar/flute out entrance and a percussion-heavy rhythm part supplying highly effective propulsion for the chief’s quicksilver strains.

By the next 12 months he was stretching additional into new inspirations, as evidenced by the exploratory Baiyina (The Clear Proof). The album included devices and sounds from Indian classical music as Martino cast a type of impassioned transcendentalism, merging his fervent soloing and muscular swing with meditative drones.

By the mid-’70s, rock and jazz had collided with the delivery of fusion — Miles Davis was breaking new floor together with his heady electrical bands, and teams like Return To Endlessly and John McLaughlin’s Mahavishnu Orchestra had been discovering success far past jazz audiences. Martino delved into the scene with “Starbright” and the landmark “Joyous Lake,” bolstering his trademark sound with serrated distortion and cosmic synths, inserting his meticulous fury in an appropriately electrifying setting.

Following his surgical procedure in 1980, Martino spent a number of years relearning the instrument, listening again to his personal recordings and combating melancholy and the grueling means of recovering his abilities. He reemerged in 1987 with The Return, which showcased a miraculous virtuosity seemingly undiminished by his brush with demise and amnesia.

Martino continued to tour and document for the subsequent three a long time, usually taking part in in laborious bop or organ combo settings that harkened again to his early profession, whereas displaying a tasteful mastery reflecting his blissful, in-the-moment outlook. Having recaptured various reminiscences within the intervening years, in 2011 he launched his autobiography, Right here and Now! His final launch was the straight-ahead Formidable in 2017.

Martino usually spoke in aphorisms, responding to direct questions with a wandering curiosity that will circuitously wind its option to one thing resembling a solution. Whereas he rejected any explicit philosophy or religious follow, he seen his music and life from a holistic perspective that refused to divorce artwork from existence.

“I am by no means not working,” he insisted in 2008. “To me, work is play. Artistic productiveness is essentially the most playful, infantile way of thinking that I reside inside on a relentless foundation. I can not relate to holidays, as a result of I’ve nothing to vacate. I am alive and I am comfortable. And thank god, I am much less occupied with ideas in regards to the future, which does not exist, or reminiscences which might be weighty.”

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